in reply to My favorite HTML font style tag is...

TacoVendor beat me to the <blink> joke, so i'll have to be serious. I voted for <tt>, because until i started hanging out at the Monastery, i never used this tag. I like to use it in my posts to markup CPAN modules, subroutines, methods, and variables, as long as i don't have to use the [ or < symbols (which require escaping or 'inline' <code> tags). Here is an example. 
That's why i like [cpan://Time::Piece]. Not only is it a
drop-in replacement for <tt>localtime</tt> and
<tt>gmtime</tt>, <tt>Time::Piece</tt> also ...

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Pesonally, i think the extra typing is worth it, but some might claim it's not being lazy. ;)

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

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Re: Re: My favorite HTML font style tag is...
by theAcolyte (Pilgrim) on Aug 20, 2003 at 05:17 UTC

    I'm a nitpicker. I admit it. Since you're using <tt> to show emphasis, you should really use <EM> </EM> and then use your stylesheet to make your EM equivalent to teletype.

    - Erik

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Promoting web standards since 3 PM today.

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      Why? What's the difference. I am sure that there is a good one, but i don't understand why you just say "you should this!" without explaining why. Also, if you were a nitpicker then you would have said "use <em> tags" instead, because that's the XHTML way (all lower cased elements).

      Letsee, i just tested this html: 

      <p>this is <i>italic</i></p>
<p>this is <em>emphasis</em></p>
<p>this is <tt>teletype</tt></p>

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      and viewed it with lynx, which 'rendered' the <i> and <em> tags, but not the <tt> tag. If this is what you were referring to, then yes, i should switch. But i probably won't. ;)

      jeffa

      L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)
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[d/l]
        Ya, my XHTML is garbage, thanks for reminding me.

        The reason for using <em> over <i> or <b> in this situation is the idea of structure vs. presentation.

        In an ideal world, your HTML would only mark up your content structurally ...

        • <em> rather then <i> or <b> for emphasis
        • <code> rather then <pre> for mono-spaced code
        • <h1> for a headline instead of <font>

        Why bother, you ask? (Well, even if you don't....) Because not all devices that render HTML pages are visual -- example, if someone is looking at your page on a Palm Pilot, then the palm can interpret emphasis the best way it can. Also, search engines are better equiped to deal with structural markup -- markup that signifies what type of data something is.

        Once you can do all your mark-up structurally, you can use CSS to have your HTML visually styled in the user-agents that can handle it, and the ones that can't will still be able to digest it easily.

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